United 93 (2006)

Just about a month ago it was ten years after the tragedy of 9/11.

All over the world people remembered the horrible events and the many victims who lost their lives on that sad day.
I remembered it as if it was yesterday. I was still at school and on my way home when I heard the news. It was on every channel. The images felt so unreal. But real they were.

And even more people could have died. It was four planes highjacked but only three of them reached their target.

The docudrama by Paul Greengrass shows the passengers of airplane "United 93" in their last moments on board.

The film was hailed by many critics and indeed it is very intense and well acted.
On that day all the passengers enter the plane like on any other day.
They are unknown, ordinary people. Just like the terrorists. We don't get background information.
It's like we are with them on this anonymous flight. But we know what's gonna happen. They know nothing. Nothing about what they are getting into and nothing about what already is happening on the ground.

Meanwhile there is already huge confusion at the airport's control center.
The detailed observation of the chaos going on in the tower stations is presented very well.
We get the idea in what huge trouble the administration was to get an overview over the events and coordinate all the different machines when the first airplanes started to leave their course, stopped to respond, send bizarre radio messages or disappear entirely.

No one is prepared for this. Panic is everywhere when people realize it's an act of terrorism after the planes crash into World Trade Center. United 93 is still in the air. Soon some of the passengers reveal themselves as terrorists. They threaten the other people on board with a bomb (that is fake as we later realize) while they kill the pilots and take over the plane. All the faces are filled with sadness, fear and anger. Many passengers call their relatives. Many of them already assume that they are not going to survive this. But their will to survive eventually defeats the fear and they stand up to fight for their lives.

This is not depicted as an act of heroism but with little pathos and as a struggle to survive .
There are no heroes. The way of presentation increases the films impact.
There is no need for a spoiler warning when I tell you I felt deeply moved and unsettled when at the end the people crush down the terrorists and the plane crashes somewhere in the countryside.

It shows how devastating and pointless our world can be. I have to admit that if the film was pure fiction it would not have been that appalling. But this really happened. Sad but true.